I’ve been wondering about this since hearing the story of Michael Wamsley and Janelle Hornickel, two young students who got high on meth and lost in the country in a blizzard and froze to death in spite of repeatedly calling 911 on their cell phone. You can read the full transcript of their calls here, and a tertiary argument I started about it in the pit here, if you’re curious.
The long and short of it is that since they were hallucinating and confused so much, they kept telling the 911 dispatchers that they were just blocks from their apartment. They kept up this idea for several hours without ever realizing that they were something like 100 miles away from there.
Why? I understand that people who hallucinate get really confused and delusional, but why would they both be convinced of the same delusions and generally having the same hallucinatory ideas, holding on to them to the point where they eventually died? Are hallucinating people able to easily influence each other’s hallucinations and adopt the same hallucinations and delusions? I always imagined that in a situatoin like this, they would each be having very individualized hallucinations and delusions based on their own particular neuroses.
I have no idea if the case Freejooky describes could be considered folie à deux, but the possibility for two people to share delusional beliefs and even hallucinations does seem to exist under rare circumstances.
Hallucinations can definately be influenced by the people around you, especially if they are someone you are close to and you trust. It’s not like you can say “hey, there are robots over there” and the other person will see robots, but moods and concepts can pass between people pretty easily. Even people that arn’t on drugs can share a lot of the experience when in an intense one on one conversation with someone hallucinating.
Once when I was young, I dropped LSD with a friend and we sat up all night tripping. At one point she lay down to rest and I lay alongside her, holding her in my embrace. I closed my eyes with my forehead resting on her back, and saw a universe of bright swirling color patterns. After a while all the colors went to flat gray. I became concerned and called “Monique! What happened to you?” until she said “Huh? I just went to sleep, that’s all.” Somehow I had seen the energy patterns of her conscious mind fading out as she fell asleep.
I recall reading an article some years ago about plane crashes. It was primarily about the psychology of the flight crew. Apparently they will commonly back their own beliefs over the instrument readings without any reason to believe that the instruments are wrong.
A few aquaintances of mine back in high school had a great night on acid watching (and apparently conversing with) a bunch of gnomes that were running around their living room. 5 or 6 people were part of this, and they all told similar stories about things these gnomes did. They grabbed cameras and took a bunch of pictures of the gnomes as proof to the rest of us.
A few days later they got back a whole roll of pictures depicting their couches, tables and chairs. No gnomes.
First rule of Gnomes: When taking pictures of Gnomes always have them hold something over their heads. They won’t show on the photo but the hovering object will prover their existance.
Back when I indulged in LSD, a friend and I once had a long conversation with someone who wasn’t there. Just plain wasn’t there, but we both saw him and believed we were talking to him. So yes, I can totally understand what happened to the unfortunate meth-heads in the OP.
I believe that it is so, if for no other reason than because two hallucinating individuals share a common experience set with each other, much like non-tripping people share with other non-tripping people. Add enhanced suggestibility and/or empathy into the mix and it pretty much goes from there.
Q: who hallucinates on meth, barring the psychosis from extreme, long-term abuse?
I’d say not “easily”. It’s going to vary widely from person to person. Probably the same folks who are more susceptible to hypnosis, e.g. those with a rich fantasy life and are willing to be hypnotized, will be more influenced by the announced hallucinations of those around them.
I personally get so wrapped up in my own hallucinations that I am oblivious to those around me.
On the few occasions I’ve tripped on shrooms I and my fellow derangeniks reported seeing somewhat similar things, but my more vivid hallucinations tended to not be terribly similar to those of others around me. Once I saw a compact disc leap from its jewell case, do a little dance in the air, and then fall back into the jewell case. Considering this sufficiently mind-blowing to share, I shouted something like “Did you see that?” No. They didn’t. One of them got awfully fascinated with the disc, but he saw swirls of fiery color bounding off of it as he moved his head; probably a distorted interpretation of the light diffracted on its surface. During that same trip I went into the bathroom to take a dump. I was joined by another in the next stall who had to pee. Both sitting (my neighbor was a young woman), I shouted “Oh my God, try this!”: When I put my hands down to either side of me, it felt just like the reached all the way to the floor. This was incredibly wild, because the chicklet-like tiles somehow made the floor seem like this shimmering grid sea some great distance away.
Well, she tried it, and neither felt nor observed anything of the sort. The fact two people can have qualitatively the same hallucination is amazing to me, quite honestly.
I will reiterate the question: Who the hell trips on meth?
Yes, it can absolutely happen, I can attest as yet another person who took pretty frequesnt acid trips with friends back in my college days. Our critical thinking ability was definitely affected, and we could talk each other into see =ing or feeling almost any damn thing. I suppose it’s a good thing we never wandered out into a blizzard.